Ex Factor
by evieeden
Summary: It's hard to come face to face with your ex. It's even harder when he doesn't remember you.


**Started writing this one at the same time that I wrote Waiting All Night, so I get to finish and post them at the same time. I think this is one of my favourites of the 26 fics to write though so I really hope you like it. Nearly at the end of my song A-Z now so I hope you enjoy reading this one. I also sort of cheated with the alphabet and went with EX, rather than X.**

 **As always, I don't own anything to do with Marvel.**

 **X: Ex Factor – Lauryn Hill**

 **Ex Factor**

Natasha was good at compartmentalising.

She had years of experience at not looking back, not regretting her actions and not worrying about what other people thought of her. There were those who snuck in, however, underneath her reserve and stedfastedly stoic personality.

Clint, of course. Coulson after she had been brought in by Shield. Fury a little later.

Later still, the Avengers – Coulson's motley crew of 'heroes'. Tony Stark with his brash attitude and intelligent eyes, Thor with his open acceptance, Steve with his plain, old-fashioned goodness, and then Bruce, who was possibly more untrusting of his ow worth than she was.

Before them though, there had been Yasha.

She had loved him more than she ever thought possible - loved him in the way that only a sixteen year old who had led a sheltered life could. It was a brief romance, but passionate.

He had trained her – only her – the Red Room's best and brightest, taught by the best assassin the world had ever seen. He had taught her how to fight, how to break and how to kill. He had taught her how to stay alive.

He had taught her how to love and how to keep that last little piece of herself back from them so she would always be herself.

In return, she had given him everything of her that she could.

She worshipped him clumsily with her body, trying to show him through touches and caresses how she felt and bringing back lost memories he had of the pleasures of the flesh and how to make the female body sing.

She shared her memories with him – what little she remembered of her past, of her country and of her family. It wasn't a lot. The Red Room had already taken most of it, but what little she had left in her mind, she shared willingly with him.

And she gave him her heart, withered and shrivelled through lack of nurturing. She told him she loved him, that she was in love with him, told him she adored him and that when the time came, they would leave this Godforsaken place together.

He vanished the next day.

She was beaten half to death for insubordination.

She never mentioned the word 'love' again.

It hurt.

Even though she knew that the abandonment wasn't deliberate, a small of that naïve sixteen year old still didn't understand why Yasha had never come for her like they had planned.

Time passed.

The Red Room fell. So did the KGB. The Clint and Shield happened.

She put Yasha resolutely out of her mind. He was probably dead by now and thinking about him led to all sorts of hurt and pain and vodka.

Except he wasn't dead.

Of course, she didn't know that until he showed up during an assignment and put a bullet through her stomach.

Everyone at Shield thought that she was so shaken because she had been shot. There were the sympathetic pats on the shoulders from those agents pulled off-roster for PTSD who dared to think that they had permission to touch her (she soon re-educated them) and there were even more smug glances from agents who enjoyed watching the Black Widow being taken down (spineless pricks who couldn't handle a woman being more skilled than them and who Natasha enjoyed beating up in response).

They had no idea though, not really.

A part of her had believed he was dead. Even though she rationally knew the Russians would never destroy their asset if they thought they could help it, a part of her still believed that they had terminated him after their aborted escape attempt.

But he was alive. Still alive, still beautiful to her, still breath-stealing.

She had foolishly pulled her scientist behind her when she realised they were under attack and then frozen at the sight of him, and she had been punished for her oversight, for her hesitation.

It was the only scar she received that she ever felt she deserved.

He was still alive and her heart sang.

There had been no recognition on his face and her heart had sunk again.

So she did what she was forced to do the last time he had left her – she buried her feelings, the love she still felt after all those years, and squashed it down so deep that no-one could hurt her and her fragile, pathetic emotions again.

She hardened. She became stronger.

She became the assassin that everyone in Shield feared, if they weren't already scared of what she could do.

Then came the Avengers Initiative and Steve – stupid, honest, kind Steve – and with them, the fall of Shield and old lover, remade anew.

He wasn't Yasha anymore, not really, although he marked her skin again with a bullet hole just as skilfully, but he wasn't Steve's Bucky anymore either.

He was something else… someone new.

She cried when she realised what they had done to him, curled up in her bathroom, clutching the folder she had retrieved from Kiev for Steve. She had traded in favour after favour to get hold of it and afterwards she knew.

She wouldn't be getting Yasha back again, even if Steve found him.

So once more she took her feelings and locked them away in a little box that no-one could ever reach.

When Steve finally showed up at the tower with him, months later, she was prepared…braced even.

He was more Winter Soldier than Bucky Barnes, but he was gradually coming back to himself, gradually becoming the person that his oldest friend had once known, if a little rougher around the edges.

Yasha was nowhere to be found in him. She didn't even think he recognised her half the time, or at least, not as Natalia. As far as Bucky Barnes was concerned, she was Natasha who worked with Steve and who he had shot once upon a time.

She resolutely didn't care. And when she began to care a little too much, she retreated to Clint's farm and the warmth of his family.

It wasn't avoidance, she told herself; it was self-preservation.

She couldn't do it. She couldn't get her hopes up every time she saw him again only to crumble when they were torn apart or he attacked her or even, and this was truly pathetic, when he walked past her in the hallway. He was the only person she had ever truly been in love with and every time she saw him she wanted to cry.

Natalia Romanova had once been stupid enough to cry over her Yasha, she would hope that Natasha Romanoff could finally be grown up enough and resolved enough not to.

She stuck to her guns. She compartmentalised.

Until the day that she walked past him…

…and he saw her.


End file.
